


The Prince's Shadow

by starling



Category: Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2 - Shakespeare, Henry V - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Gen, Iambic Pentameter, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 21:13:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19838602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starling/pseuds/starling
Summary: Ned Poins was a young gentleman of good family, but bad morals. He was one of those loyal natures who, in all ages, are to be found attaching themselves instinctively to some great man, taking their tone and colour in all things from the illustrious model. Mr. Poins cut his hair and his conscience in exact imitation of the Prince of Wales. The existing court fashions, as established by the Prince, were long hanging sleeves, pointed shoes, late hours, intoxication, and roistering. Mr. Poins followed them all with scrupulous fidelity; but was quite ready to change them for sad-coloured doublets, square toes, early rising, temperance, and respectability, at a moment's notice.





	The Prince's Shadow

**PROLOGUE**

_(The stage: a mattress on the floor with untidy white bedding, a wooden chair a few feet away. The floor is covered with unwashed laundry. POINS is sprawled across the bed, asleep. Enter CHORUS.)_

CHORUS  
This was a young gentleman of good family, but bad morals. He was one of those loyal natures who, in all ages, are to be found attaching themselves instinctively to some great man, taking their tone and colour in all things from the illustrious model. Mr. Poins cut his hair and his conscience in exact imitation of the Prince of Wales. The existing court fashions, as established by the Prince, were long hanging sleeves, pointed shoes, late hours, intoxication, and roistering. Mr. Poins followed them all with scrupulous fidelity; but was quite ready to change them for sad-coloured doublets, square toes, early rising, temperance, and respectability, at a moment's notice. 

_(Poins blinks awake, sits up with his head in his hands, letting loose a piteous grumble of hungover misery. He inspects an ambiguous drink on his bedside and, shrugging, drinks it. The CHORUS rolls his eyes, and continues.)_

CHORUS  
A young gentlemen of good family, but bad morals. There are men who seem born to be the opposite, the reverse, the counterpart. They live only upon condition of leaning on another; their names are continuations, and are only written preceded by the conjunction “and”; their existence is not their own; it is the other side of a destiny which is not theirs. Ned Poins was one of those men.

_(Exit CHORUS.)_

POINS  
The bright years are behind me, and I live  
In twilight, when the world is robbed of all  
Its colour. E’en the morning sun is hateful,  
For daylight is a place of solitude:  
Young men in love, and blushing maidens fair,  
And sport, and fie! fie on it all, hollow  
Nonsense. What life is life? What joy is joy?  
A glass full empty and a life full lived,  
And what remains? Ay, me.

_(Enter NELL, who surreptitiously places down her bucket of water and immediately begins to tidy the room.)_

NELL  
Now, how’s the head?

_(Poins makes a rude gesture.)_

NELL  
I shall never marry well, if it is  
Put about that I am sister to a  
Drunkard.

POINS  
You have other brothers.

NELL  
And you shall have other lovers.

POINS  
An impious leap, to think from brothers to lovers without pausing.

NELL  
And don’t you think you’ve paused enough? The king  
Was crowned two months ago, and since – in his  
Sad absence – you revel, in spilling wine  
And drinking sack, and even now he fares  
More sportively in France, in sacking cities  
And spilling soldiers’ blood across the continent.  
Oh shame! My brother has no appetite  
For war, no honour-winning ferocity,  
No part of him has caught a breath of courage  
From kingly airs, and drinking with the prince;  
He may have caught some other fire betimes,  
No reading, physic, learning, strategy,  
No wife! No, Ned brings only Ned, and wit,  
A truant disposition, like a jester,  
Or fool, that kings may mock a trifling hour,  
Before the weight of states turns them aside,  
To solid things, and leave the past denied.

NED  
And you are… a woman. Ha! Go to! Go to!  
I’ll not be chid. _(He turns his back as if to sleep again.)_

NELL _(she tops the water over his head)_  
Wake! Wake, you fool!

POINS  
Later!

NELL  
Not later, why, not tomorrow neither, but now, today, rise in the morning.

POINS _(lewdly)_  
Rise in the morning? What, to rise early, a cock crowing at the dawn? Not after the wine I drank yesternight, in faith.  
I’m yet a man, and have a man’s weaknesses.

NELL _(Looks into the audience like she’s on the Office, gesturing exasperatedly)_  
Two months! Two months of… this! _(to Poins)_ Am I to call a doctor?

POINS  
Marry, my immortal part needs a physician, but that moves not me. Though that be sick, I die not.

NELL  
To church, then, good Ned, to church!

POINS  
If the church be dark, and quiet. Aye. To Church.

_(She hauls him bodily from the bed, and shepherds him out the room.)_

CHORUS  
Now entertain conjecture of a time  
Past. Each bleak morning follows some bright night,  
Before the lark that sings so out of tune,  
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps,  
The herald of the morn, his message that  
Cold daylight comes to kill our former joys.  
The truth, which waketh now, was once asleep,  
And young men with bad morals dined in Eastcheap.

_(Exit CHORUS.)_

**EXTRACT FROM A LATER SCENE**

HAL  
But do you use me thus, Ned? must I marry your sister?

POINS  
God send the wench no worse fortune! But I never said so.

HAL _(carefully)  
_ My greatness weigh'd, my will is not my own;  
For I myself am subject to my birth:  
I may not, as… unvalued persons do,  
Carve for myself; for on my choice depends  
The safety and health of this whole state;  
And therefore must my choice be circumscribed  
Unto the voice and yielding of that body  
Whereof I am the head. Then if I say I love….( _he pauses, clearly forgetting the name)_ Nell?  
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it  
As I in my particular act and place  
May give my saying deed; which is no further  
Than the main voice of England goes withal.

POINS  
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,  
As watchman to my heart.

HAL  
Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.  
Jack sups tonight in Eastcheap, with others;  
Shall we steal upon them, Ned, at supper?

POINS  
I am your shadow, my lord; I'll follow you.

_(Exit HAL and POINS.)_

**A LATER SCENE**

_(An apartment of the prince’s. POINS is clearly waiting for him, and and grows bored. He s_ _tarts leafing through the books on the desk.)_

POINS  
Why, what books are these? Divinity,  
And two debates of commonwealth affairs,  
More discourses on war, on policy,  
The Sallic law, and books of royal prayer -  
And something written in the prince's hand:

 _(Reads)  
_ “I know you all, and will awhile uphold  
The unyoked humour of your idleness:  
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,  
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds  
To smother up his beauty from the world,  
That, when he please again to be himself,  
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,  
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists  
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.  
If all the year were playing holidays,  
To sport would be as tedious as to work;  
But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,  
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.  
So, when this loose behavior I throw off  
And pay the debt I never promised,  
By how much better than my word I am,  
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;  
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,  
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,  
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes  
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.  
I'll so offend, to make offence a skill;  
Redeeming time when men think least I will.”

‘Base contagious clouds’? ‘Foul and ugly mists’?  
So when it pleases Hal again to be  
Himself, why then would I not be his shadow,  
Or humoured, and hopes falsified,  
Forswear it, not for bright metal alone.  
Be wary then; best safety lies in fear:  
And when he throws us off, I’ll not be near.

Exit Poins, then. Farewell, Hal. Prince Henry.

_(Exit POINS.)_

**A FINAL SCENE**

_(Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY and PAGE.)_

MISTRESS QUICKLY  
Go, take this letter to the palace. Falstaff is dying. The king has killed his heart.

PAGE  
I will go, Madam.

_(Enter HAL, with crown and armour, into the spotlight. In mime: the PAGE presents the letter, HAL shakes his head and steps away. The PAGE presents the letter again, insistently, and the SOLDIER takes the PAGE by the arm and leads him to the edge of the stage. Exit PAGE and SOLDIER.)_

HAL  
When I was a child, I spoke as a child,  
I understood as a child, I thought as  
A child: but when I became a man I  
Put away childish things.

_(Enter SOLDIER, and BARDOLPH in handcuffs. They cross the stage slowly, BARDOLPH calling out.)_

BARDOLPH  
What, hang me? For a trifling theft of some small items from a church? Let the king be sent for, he will put this villainy to rest. I know the king! Let me be, villains! Gods’ hooks, are you deaf? I know the king! Let him be sent for!

HAL  
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but  
Then face to face. Now I know in part; but  
Then shall I know even as also I  
Am known.

_(Exit SOLDIER and BARDOLPH.)_

_(Enter POINS and NELL. They do not see HAL at first, but POINS notices him just as they are leaving the stage: he pauses for a moment as if he wants to say something, then thinks better of it. )_

POINS  
Your majesty.

_(HAL nods to him. Exit POINS.)_

HAL  
When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

_(Exit HAL.)_


End file.
